et non sapientior

Don’t call us “barbarians” dammit; we have rules for how we “treat” our sexual slaves!

Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when “owners” of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females.

The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond the Islamic State’s previous known utterances on the subject, a leading Islamic State scholar said. It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it controls.

The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by U.S. Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top Islamic State official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed some of the documents, which have not been previously published.

Among the religious rulings are bans on a father and son having sex with the same female slave; and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as “part of a joint ownership.”

And the article ends with this particular piece of odious propaganda:

“Islam preaches freedom to slaves, not slavery. Slavery was the status quo when Islam came around,” he said. “Judaism, Christianity, Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations all practiced it and took the females of their enemies as sex slaves. So Islam found this abhorrent practice and worked to gradually remove it.”

Slavery has existed as long as humans have, and it was 19th century Jews and Christians who worked to stamp it out in the West; in Islamic Eastern Africa and the Middle East it continues to this day.

The 29-year-old was hit in the head by a steel shard
A German man died on Christmas Day after blowing up a condom dispenser with a homemade bomb in a botched robbery, police say.
The 29-year-old and two accomplices attached the bomb to the vending machine in a quiet street before taking cover in their vehicle.
But the victim did not close the door in time and was struck in the head by a steel shard from the explosion.

Would you believe that Cory Booker, who arguably didn’t even live in the city he was nominally Mayor of while he was gallivanting around the country prior to his anointment as Senator, would you believe that there was rampant corruption on his watch?

NEWARK – Newark officials said they were dismayed by the former head of the Newark Watershed Conservation Development Corporation’s guilty plea on corruption-related charges earlier this week – an outcome many felt could have been prevented.

Linda Watkins-Brashear, who presided over the non-profit agency until 2013 – just one year before it was dissolved amid widespread allegations of corruption and mismanagement – is facing up to 23 years in prison and $350,000 in fines for conspiracy and filing a false tax return.

She is the second person to plead guilty to charges related to the scandal, though many in the state’s largest city consider it a reflection of an agency run amok thanks to the wandering eye of now-U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, who was mayor over the entirety of Watkins’ tenure.

While Newark was laying off police officers and begging for state bailouts, one of its most important contractors was siphoning off millions of city dollars in illegal payments, sweetheart deals, and risky stock ventures right under the noses of city leaders, according to a report released today by the state comptroller’s office.

Until a judge appointed trustees to dissolve the agency last year, the Newark Watershed Conservation Development Corporation managed the city’s 35,000 acres of reservoirs and treated water for more than 500,000 customers in northern New Jersey.

Between 2008 and 2011, the state comptroller alleges that agency leaders and insiders absconded with millions of public dollars.

“This report documents an egregious and yet preventable abuse of public funds that was allowed to continue unfettered for years because of poor oversight,” said comptroller chief of staff Melissa Liebermann in a statement issued today with the 45-page report.

Acting State Comptroller Marc Larkins was recused from the matter. Much of the inquiry was headed by his predecessor, Matthew Boxer.

Linda Watkins-Brashear, the agency’s director and a political ally of former Newark mayor, now Sen. Cory Booker, wrote unreported checks to herself to the tune of $200,000, was awarded $700,000 in two severance packages, gave more than $1 million in contracts to her friends and ex-husband, and lost $500,000 in dubious stock ventures, the report states.

…Through her attorneys, Watkins-Brashear said the report wrongly laid blame at her feet and said she acted at all times with the knowledge and approval of then Mayor Cory Booker’s administration.

And the cocooned assholes in the Republican Party wonder why some populist demagogue like Trump has such appeal

The New Gilded Age Is Better Than the Old Gilded Age Because Now We Have Homeland and Other Quality Premium Cable TV Offerings
If I have this right:

We needed to quadruple the number of H2B visas because we needed far more nonagricultural, low-skill, low-wage workers coming into the country. H2B visas are granted for jobs like “amusement park worker.”

As you know, amusement park workers, at, for example, large corporations like Disney, have been absolutely Raping their poor corporate paymasters with their insolent insistence that they be paid a dollar fifty more than minimum wage.

We need to import foreign workers to get that number down to a more acceptable dollar over minimum wage.

This makes our corporations More Globally Competitive (TM).

Now, the various American workers displaced by the foreign ones will go, of course, on welfare (after their unemployment insurance runs out, of course). Those costs will be borne by you, the American taxpayer.

Not only will those costs be borne by you, but so will all the knock-on costs. People stripped of their work are also stripped of their dignity. Work is a tangible connection, reinforced every hour of every day of every week, between present labor and good habits and future gain.

Read the whole thing. The GOP, especially after this latest Ryan debacle, deserves to disappear.

Secret US Policy Blocks Agents From Looking at Social Media of Visa Applicants, Former Official Says

Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration

, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official said.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.

One current and one former senior counter-terrorism official confirmed Cohen’s account about the refusal of DHS to change its policy about the public social media posts of all foreign applicants.

IF you are in the US, a prospective employer has a right to demand YOUR Facebook posts/social media past, but Obama says we can’t ask foreigners who want to enter the US ‘Whud you say online that might be unhelpful to the US?“ I forgot. The guy thinks a little collateral damage (re: you and me shot to pieces/sliced to ribbons) is okay, as long as we don’t hurt any Muslim feelings and he gets to say his “plan” is working.

Whoever came up with this should be shamed far worse than anything Lurch wants to do to Climate Deniers.

“…GWEN IFILL: The president did not announce a new strategy to defeat the Islamic State, but he did call for greater gun control measures. They would include not allowing people whose names appear on no-fly lists to buy firearms.

In San Bernardino, reactions at a makeshift memorial were lukewarm.

MAN: He has to walk a fine line, but it probably comes across as a little weak, but that is kind of Obama’s style.

WOMAN: It wasn’t strong enough.

It appears to me, every time that he talks on camera, that this is like a bothersome thing for him, that he really just does not want to have to deal with this.

She nailed it. He just can’t be bothered, so why can’t we all accept the collateral damage and leave him the hell alone.